Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As we ramp up supply, it does not necessarily mean that we will need the same number of individuals as we have done in the past. We can take advantage of new technologies. Of course we still need people and a scheme in my area has been quite successful in training people and in taking them from long-term unemployment, and even some people who had been homeless, into working jobs. They did this in a matter of weeks and trained them in the basic skills. I went to visit them for their graduation ceremony. It is a small enough throughput of maybe ten to 14 people in each class, but it does work and it produces results. Every additional body is definitely necessary. A new group is being put in place in the context of Project Ireland 2040 to monitor the needs around skills and everything else as investment ramps up massively across the economy, not just in house building. We will be keeping a very close eye on that and the Construction Industry Federation will sit on that new group.

With regard to some of the ideas that Senator Murnane O'Connor has put forward, she describes it as a policy shift coming from Fianna Fáil. It is not actually a policy shift rather it is measures that the Government is already taking with regard to affordability. I announced schemes earlier this year relating to new protections in the rental sector such as rent pressure zones, greater security of tenure, rent transparency and rent fairness. These are things we are in the process of doing. More money has been made available for social housing with an additional €100 million being put into the budget in the last quarter of last year to provide for regeneration and more house building in certain parts of the State where we could avail of it. We knew that this additional funding in that fourth quarter would get people into those homes by the end of the year. It also provided for some family hubs. On top of that, I secured an additional €500 million from the Minister for Finance for Rebuilding Ireland. The capital finance available for the five-year programme is now above €6 billion. A ring-fenced capital fund over a multi-annual programme has never happened before. It gives me great flexibility if I need, in a given year, to do more of certain things. I can do that and I can provide the funding. It is very useful in that regard.

Reference was made to credit unions financing social housing or house building. This is a Central Bank issue ultimately, but a huge amount of private finance is now interested in building social housing homes and private homes. The enhanced leasing scheme and the new mortgage to rent scheme have shown significant increase in interest from the private side to bring the money to provide solutions for home building, which is very welcome. There will be more announcements about that in the near future.

Turning to the Rebuilding Ireland home loan, nobody should be advocating imprudent lending in this regard. There are certain criteria to make sure that the loans given are affordable and that people can meet their repayment targets. I had a meeting on this yesterday with the relevant people. There are a couple of things we will do and I recognise that some tweaks might be made. but whether they will be made in this first tranche of €200 million or in the second tranche is being looked at currently.

We spoke a little about history lessons. I believe that it is incorrect to hark back to 2008 when we talk about the numbers at the time because there were too many homes being built, and also because of the amount of money being spent on housing. They were not built on sustainable finances. As we talk about these issues, we need to be aware of the mistakes that were made in the past so we do not repeat them. We need to look to the future and where we all want to go as a State and as a society in building more homes that are private, social and affordable.

Senator Boyhan asked about the targets for local authorities in the context of social housing. The direct build target for this year for local authorities and housing bodies is 3,800. There are some outliers and some local authorities are not moving as quickly as others, but we have doubled the local authority build for this year. It is a very ambitious target and we have put in new resources to help them with it.

On the output that has been achieved, the numbers published by the Department are the accurate numbers. They are not claims; they are accurate. They have to be verified every year with the Committee of Public Accounts and the public spending codes. There are statisticians within the Department who check and double check. They might move the provisional figures and then give the final figures. It is part of a very robust process in the Department. I recognise, however, that it is sometimes difficult to communicate the numbers because with social housing we have six different delivery streams. It is not like it was back in the day when it was just the local authority that built social housing. Now there are housing bodies building social housing, there is the Part V stream and we also have acquisitions because in some parts of the State, acquisitions offer better value for money. Long-term leasing is a new type of delivery stream, involving 25 or 30 year leases. There is also the void conversion programme. These are empty social housing homes that are not in use and the programme brings them back on line. As a result of the different delivery streams, it is very easy for certain parties, if they want, to unpick the numbers to give the impression of very low build rates when it is not actually the case. Last year, 2,200 new homes were built across local authorities, housing bodies and the Part V delivery scheme. This is three times the number in 2016. This year, we will double that number again. We are coming from nothing because of mistakes that were made in the past. We are, however, ramping up very quickly.

I clarify for Senator Boyhan that I gave the 2017 figures in January. They are the accurate figures and they are broken down by build, voids, acquisitions and leasing. It is very clear. People can look at the table in the document on the 2017 results that was published in January this year. The Senator asked about increasing direct build. We are doing that and all the numbers are up for social housing on the private side. It is up 30%, 37% and 41%, and building energy rating numbers are up 45%. These are huge increases. We are seeing increases we have never seen before, even in the good years, in investment in the residential area. Much of that is foreign investment, which is not necessarily a bad thing. In the boom years, part of the reason that it was so destructive to our economy is that we were selling property to each other at inflated prices. If mature, residential investors want to come into the market to provide new solutions around apartment building or mature build-to-rent, and if these investors are looking for a steady rate of return - not supernormal profits but a 3% or 4% uptake year on year for pension fund investors, pension funds such as the teachers' unions in the United States of America that have very large resources - then there is no problem with that funding coming into the economy. It means there are more solutions being driven every year.

On affordability, a new agency is being developed currently. We are doing detailed work on it. It is about using public lands and semi-State land as leverage to drive affordable house building. If we need to compulsorily purchase certain land because it makes sense for site assembly in particular strategic areas, then we will do that.A huge amount of working is happening at the moment so that when we come to announce what we are doing, everyone is quite clear on our objectives. There will be quite an important intervention in the land market.

How much time do I have left?